The Oregon Trail "Under a Summer Moon" 3:28

My, my, my, if it isn't a game that's looooooooong overdue to be represented here. Do your best to avoid dysentery, it's The Oregon Trail! I loved playing this back in the day on the Apple IIe, but that version didn't have any music, so we're repping it on the 1993 Windows version, which actually had a soundtrack. Wouldn't you know it, minusworld had a full party of six hitting the dusty trail, taking on themes from the first AND second games:

* minusworld - arranger, vocals, acoustic guitar, bass
* Lady Varda - concept, co-arranger
* DeLuxDolemite - drumkit
* Mattmatatt - harmonica
* Steven Higbee - ocarina
* optimizasean - violin

For minusworld, this was a chance to make wife Lady Varda happy, and we KNOW that happy wife = happy life. :-) Hopefully minus made her even happier by, as he noted, incorporating so many other talented performers:

"Thanks to my collaborators for making this happen! It was really fun to gather a large crew to throw all these weird instruments together.

I really wanted live drums for this one, and DeLuxDolemite delivered! (I don't mix live drums often, though, so I apologize for any quirkiness. :-3)
Mattmatatt went 500% overboard, recording not just one but five stacked harmonica tracks which sounded AWESOME. He also gave great mix feedback.
While listening to some Native American flutes, I noticed that many sounded like ocarinas, so I hit up Steven Higbee for a little ocarina work.
optimizasean did the violins, which he turned around in like 2 days after getting the parts!
Electric guitar is my main instrument, and this is my first non-acoustic remix that has no EGs in it whatsoever. To jam my own personal style into the arrangement, I went a little ham on the bass instead. ':-D"

Man, I didn't know Mattmatatt was a harmonica player too; what a highlight here. The more you know! :-) Before gathering his party to head out west, minusworld also explained how his wife conceptualized the piece and its thoughtful story:

"As usual for me, this is a DoD entry, this time from February 2025, Katajun Month! Any PC game was eligible.

This track came about because my wife got excited about an Oregon Trail cover when she learned the theme was essentially PC games. I was *planning* to take a break, but told her if she came up with a concept that I would do an Oregon Trail arrangement. Given *gestures at everything* going on these days, she came up with the idea of disparate people learning to get along to make something unique and special.

Only some releases of Oregon Trail have soundtracks, but it turns out the OST is 99% American folk songs. The only original piece is the title track (cf. http://videogamemusicnerd.blogspot.com/2013/05/my-gaming-audio-history-oregon-trail.html). For the rest of the arrangement, we visited the Oregon Trail 2 soundtrack which has more original pieces... including two tracks for "Native Settlement 1" and "2" which are basically recordings of indigenous chanting.

The "story", then, became one where Oregon Trail settlers stumble upon an indigenous gathering at night, and both find something they enjoy about the others' music, finally combining into something beautiful and hopeful at the end. ... That was the idea, anyway. ':-D I hope it comes across. [...]

Lastly, a word about the vocals: I was exceedingly nervous about this part given, well, history. I wanted to be respectful, so I spent quite a bit of time reading up and watching videos on indigenous music. I even found and read an ethnomusicology publication by the Smithsonian in the 1900s. Here's the link to that Smithsonian publication. ⌕ It turns out many chants are comprised of vocables rather than words -- that is, vocal sounds with no meaning, such as "la la la" or "meedlymeedlymeeeee". In these publications, chants are recorded by writing down the vocables, therefore I mimicked this by writing down the vocables for [several] phrases from "Native Settlement 1" and "2" (from the OT2 OST) and did my best to replicate those.

In the end, this was a weird track to arrange (and co-arrange, at that!). It was way outside my norm, but I hope it is enjoyable and I hope it conveys a sense of wistful hope."

Even with minusworld aiming to be studious and intentional, an Americana approach like this is not without its challenges. Thankfully, judge prophetik music felt the party of minus, Varda, DeLux, Matt, Steven, and sean successfully traversed the trail:

"what an interesting idea for this. the opening section sounds great to my uneducated ears - this is an aspect of music history i've got little experience in. i wasn't exactly expecting queen at 0:25, but hearing how the vocal fragments fit into the setting you put it in is so cool. the americana section at 0:47 is nowhere near as much a change as i expected. [...] this is neat. the following ocarina is great and well-performed [...] the subsequent violin sounds great too, there's a bit of an earthy tone to it that really fits well. [...] this comes back to the harmonica for the OT title theme, and then we finally get our first real break at 2:27. [...] it feels really nice at that point to settle a bit. the last big section has the violins aping the vocal elements at 2:50 - what a fantastic concept, i'm surprised how much that fits together. there's one last bit of native settlement 2 and it's done.

that's a whole lot of ideas and themes in a row, but it feels more like folks sitting around a fire and passing the lead around in a circle, surprisingly enough. it's a really neat feel. [...]

this is a super fun approach that is novel and interesting. i love the leap of faith that is trying the traditional vocal methods - i'm really impressed with how it turned out. fantastic job."

A tip of the cap to minusworld for engaging the Native American-inspired aspects of the arrangement with research, reverence, and respect. For a choose-your-own-adventure game like Oregon Trail, Lady Varda's vision was not just a medley of tracks, it was a cordial meeting of cultures leading to a melding of musical styles!